Craig Knapp
Saturday, July 26th – 2:45 – 3:45 PM Session # 1
It is crucial that music educators ensure a joyful music-making environment for their students. With increased focus on the CCSS and shifts in ELA and Math, maintaining the music making has become a challenge for many music educators. This session will guide participants through Unit 1 of Conversational Solfege. This session will include a variety of activities, curriculum ideas, and assessment tools that align very naturally to the Common Core, without sacrificing joyful music making. Discover that aligning lessons with CCSS can happen naturally, without having to go outside of what we already do in our music classroom. Students should be made active and engaged participants in a variety of activities that are high quality, stimulating and JOYFUL. Music activities naturally align with Common Core philosophy to help students:
- Demonstrate independence
- Build strong content knowledge
- Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose and discipline
- Observe, comprehend and critique
- Value evidence
- Understand other cultures and perspectives
Craig B. Knapp is in his 16th year teaching Classroom Music and Chorus, grades 3 through 5, at the Joseph A. Edgar Intermediate Schoolin the Rocky Point School District, where he teaches his elementary music students through Conversational Solfege. Craig has studied closely with Dr. John Feierabend every summer since 2010, earning OAKE and FAME certification. With his innovative and energetic approach to music education, Craig Knapp directs the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York’s Children’s Treble Choirs (www.myo.org), where he has conducted at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Craig has presented elementary classroom music and choral workshops at various music education conferences.
Mr. Knapp is a Past-President of Suffolk County Music Educators’ Association and is actively involved with New York State School Music Association. He is the Administrative Program Coordinator for the Orff-Schulwerk Summer Studies at Hofstra University and is the Membership Chairperson for LIAOSA (Long Island Chapter of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association). Craig is a Lifetime Member of the Feierabend Association for Music Education and serves on their Board of Directors as Member at Large.